This is not an option. FUD forum installation was working before on the same hosting (a few years back version 2.6 or something). Come on, you can't be serious about that? There's got to be another way to install it, please! I really don't want to learn another software

I'm not afraid of difficulty but it's a shared hosting, so the provider chooses what they set for all users for their own reasons, and it won't be changed just for me if it's part of their policy... But I asked, just in case, we'll see. So far they've asked for me to send them the install script, so it does not look like they're gonna run to deactivate the detect_unicode, as much as I thought. This is a Russian hoster, so their users (including me) do need Unicode...

You can re-enable it after installing FUDforum. Not that it will make a difference, all your sites will remain 100% unicode enabled, even with this setting disabled. See the PHP documentation: detect_unicode is deprecated will be removed in the future!

OK, I passed that to my hosters, who actually managed to install it somehow but admin panel still doesn't work (looks like globals.php is missing). They've asked me to wait, they will familiarize with your forum. I don't like not knowing what somebody else does at my site, but not that I have a choice in this situation. Thank you for now.

But seriously, is there no way to deploy ready files and then set up the needed data, instead of running install.php?

My hoster managed to install it somehow but admin area wouldn't work, then he just sent me, to my understanding, deployed version of FUDforum2go for windows. But I can't use that, can I? They wouldn't turn off unicode_detect

I started looking at other forums but they just don't have what I need.

Therefore I will persist to bug you with helping me to install it somehow, if you will, PLEASE!

I'm not a big helper in making an installer but I could be testing.

What I'm desperately looking for now is manual installation. (Because I really need that forum up and running yesterday) Therefore I have 3 questions:

1) How can I get current files separately?
2) What folders do I have to put where outside web dir?
3) I have no idea about symlinks but I certainly don't have any shell access if that's required (or how do I learn if allowed? and if not what is the workaround?)

I imagine I could then edit manually the CONFIG to enter all my data, I hope! (although explanations always help)

My hoster managed to install it somehow but admin area wouldn't work, then he just sent me, to my understanding, deployed version of FUDforum2go for windows. But I can't use that, can I? They wouldn't turn off unicode_detect Sad

I started looking at other forums but they just don't have what I need.

Therefore I will persist to bug you with helping me to install it somehow, if you will, PLEASE!

My hoster managed to install it somehow but admin area wouldn't work, then he just sent me, to my understanding, deployed version of FUDforum2go for windows. But I can't use that, can I? They wouldn't turn off unicode_detect Sad

You really shouldn't get unicode detection issues with FUDforum 3.0.2. Please use the latest release.